The Real Estate Expert Network

A quick succession of events and the U.S. stock market collapsed with some of the biggest names in global investment banking, sinking without a trace. The real estate market, which uses blogging as a means to reach out to global consumers, went into an overdrive of postings that reflected apprehension, fear, and a total lack of comprehension. Blogs went buzzing with the general fear that the property market, that had seen a boom particularly with Japanese, Canadian, and German buyers scooping up U.S. property, would now see an unprecedented downward spiral.

Looking for bargains

However, foreign investors have not run with their money. The dollar going weak has made the real estate market more attractive to them. Though the weak dollar and resulting credit situation has led the economy to a short term recession, experts feel that the trends of immigration and globalization, in the long term, will revive the real estate market in the country. 

Blogging to woo the International Market

Real estate professionals in the U.S. have experienced the international reach of blogs. Blogging has proved to be an extremely resourceful means to woo foreign buyers to the U.S. property market and to expose U.S. buyers to real estate sectors in other countries. Blogging has turned real estate into a borderless entity.  The Internet today is full of sites that enable you to search for property, gives access to brokerage company information, and third party portals. Most of these are blog postings that enable individuals and companies to connect, overcoming geographical and cultural barriers. Your world today is a global village giving you access to global property information.

Once you have decided what keywords you will be targeting, the next step is to use them throughout your site. Using your keywords correctly is vital to ranking for them in the search engines. Now that you know why you need your keywords on your site, let's talk about how and where you should use your keywords on your site.

#1 - Your Domain Name

To Google and the rest of the search engines, domain names are important elements of websites. The search engines take into consideration the age of your domain name and the length of time for which it is registered. Secondarily, they register whether or not a domain name contains the site's keywords. Not having your keywords in your domain name doesn't severely harm your site's ranking potential by any means but having them in there will give your site additional value. Aim to incorporate your keywords into your domain name in a way that reads naturally. A good example is our client Marc Blasi's real estate blog, www.palmbeachrealestateandloans.com. The primary keywords for his site are "Palm Beach Real Estate" and "Palm Beach Loans". As you can see, he has created a domain name that is not only keyword-rich, but memorable and useful for marketing.

Resource: Video from SEOBook on Domain Names and Search Engine Marketing

#2 - Your Content

Having keywords in your content is how you will attain good keyword density. This is needed on your site to rank for your chosen terms. Your goal is to weave your keywords into your site's content in a way that reads well and does not come off to the search engines as keyword spamming. Follow these three rules to achieve your goal:

• Use your keywords in all of your post titles.
• Use your keywords a minimum of three times within each post.
• Be clever and come up with ways to use keywords in your content without them sticking out like a sore thumb. Example: Say the keyword you are targeting is "Coconut Creek Homes". Use a title like "The Ultimate Guide to Buying Homes in Coconut Creek". Bear in mind that the search engines are smart enough to pick up your keywords even if they are slightly out of order.

Resource: SEM Bootcamp: How Search Engines See Keywords

Next week, I will cover using your keywords in other areas of your site for additional SEO value. Check out The Real Estate Expert Network often for more helpful SEO and blogging tips!

Related Posts:

SEO 101: Choosing Your Keywords

The Buzz on Blogs and Why Your Real Estate Business Needs One

For those of you who are unfamiliar with our webinars, they are online seminars that offer the opportunity to get in-depth training on Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, and Internet Marketing. They are designed to give you the tools you need to make your site a success regardless of whether you have a Dev Element Blog or not. Participating in a webinar is quick and easy! To register, simply send an email to webinars@develementllc.com. You will be sent the instructions on how to join a webinar as well as the password for the webinar you would like to attend.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008 2:00pm-3:00pm EST

Write the Right Way - Simple Strategies to Keep Visitors and Search Engines Coming Back to Your Site

When you write for your site, you must learn to appeal to your audience and search engine spiders. Do both with the simple tips and tricks to be discussed in this webinar-it is a can't-miss event! Email webinars@develementllc.com to register!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008 2:00pm-3:00pm EST

Your Blogging Platform - A Dev Element System Refresher Course

For Client's Only! If you have questions about the Dev Element blogging platform, this is the webinar to attend. We will cover all aspects of the back office including how to set up your categories, how to write a post, and how to include pictures and video on your site. Email webinars@develementllc.com to register!

Thursday, September 25, 2008 2:00pm-3:00pm EST

Using The Real Estate Expert Network

This webinar is for everyone who is interested in our new social network for realtors. We will show you how to use this site to promote yourself and your business. You will learn how to add posts, set up your profile, and contribute to the site. Email webinars@develementllc.com to register!

Friday, September 26, 2008 2:00pm-3:00pm EST

Dear Dev Element - The New Weekly Webinar

Here is your chance to get the blogging, SEO, and internet marketing questions you have been dying to ask answered! Send your questions to webinars@develementllc.com by Wednesday each week and they will be answered here in our new weekly webinar. We will answer as many of your questions as possible with the rest answered via posts or future webinars. We want to know what you want to know! Remember to email webinars@develementllc.com to register!

So we have covered what backlinks are and the reason why you need them. Now it's time to start building some links. Back in the day, link building was a tedious and time-consuming process as the best way to get links was to solicit others in your industry and ask them to place a link on their site to yours. This of course was before blogging was popular so the web wasn't nearly as interactive as it is today. Link building is still the most challenging part of SEO but now there are more effective ways to obtain links to your site. Today, we will explore one of the top methods to get backlinks for your site. But before we get started, there are a couple of things to remember when beginning your link building campaign:

• Pay attention to the PageRank of any site you are trying to get a backlink from. Links from sites with a high PageRank will help you more than links from those with little to no PageRank. Aim to get as many links from sites with a PageRank 5 or better and avoid seeking links from any site with a PageRank of less than 3. Check the PageRank of the sites by running the RankQuest toolbar in your browser. Following this piece of advice will save you time and energy as well as enhance the overall value of your site.

• Avoid paying for backlinks. There are many sites out there trying to make a buck and are charging to give your site a link. More often than not, sites of that nature do not have good PageRank and a link from them would really be worthless to you. Not to mention that Google is catching on to people who purchase backlinks in bulk and penalizing them for it.

Now, let's build some links!

Method #1 - Submitting Your Site to Blog & RSS Feed Directories

Blog & RSS feed directories are like mini search engines. They allow a person to search through blogs and feeds for information on any given topic.  Having your blog or feed listed in these directories creates a very valuable backlink for your site.

When submitting to blog directories, you are often required to create an account, describe your site and submit your site's URL. Be sure to use your keywords when they ask for a title or description for your site so you get the best backlink possible. Here are 5 directories you can submit your blog to now-for FREE:

DMOZ-PR 9

ZoomInfo-PR 7

Business Week-PR 7

Web World Index-PR 6

Illumirate-PR 5

RSS feed directories are a little bit different. Here you are not submitting your site's URL. Instead, you are submitting the URL to the feed of your blog's content. For Dev Element clients, you can get your feed URL by clicking on the RSS Subscribe button on your site. This will take you to your actual RSS feed. The URL that appears in the browser for that page is your RSS feed's URL. Simply drop that URL into the appropriate area when asked for it during submission and you are good to go! Here are 5 FREE RSS Feed Directories to check out now:

Globe of Blogs-PR 7

EatonWeb Directory-PR 6

RSS Spider-PR 4

Read A Blog-PR 4

Blogarama-PR 4

Be sure to keep track of all of your submissions. This way you will know who you are listed with and can be sure not to duplicate submissions (directories don't like dups!). Directories do have rules that you need to follow when submitting your site so be sure that you follow them to ensure that you get listed as soon as possible. If at first you don't get accepted or listed, review the reason(s) why you did not make the cut and resubmit. This is especially important with sites that have exceptional PageRank-you want that link!

Recommended Resources on Blog Directories:

20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To by Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal

Submitting to Web Directories to Build Your Link Profile-Video from SEOBook

Role of Directories in Link Building by Eric Enge of SEOMoz

Related Posts:

Backlinks: The Key To Search Engine Success

SEO 101: Choosing Your Keywords

The Buzz on Blogs and Why Your Real Estate Business Needs One

Blogging is no longer just the pastime of teenage girls looking to broadcast their daily drama for public consumption. Nowadays, blogs are created by people of all ages for a number of reasons. For some, blogging is a platform from which they can express their opinions and interests to the world. Others start a blog with the hopes of it becoming a source of income through advertisements and the like. For businesses, blogs are a new way to connect with people in order to market products and services.

Consider the following statistics:

• 57 million Americans read blogs
• 12 million American adults maintain their own blog
• Over 120,000 new blogs are created daily
• 89% of companies feel blogs will be more important than ever within the next 5 years
• 22 of the 100 most popular sites in the world are blogs

Regardless of the motivation to create a blog, it is clear that blogs are on the verge of taking over the web as we know it. Unlike static websites, good blogs constantly updated provide valuable information to their audiences on a regular basis. Blogs have the ability to elicit conversations between post author and reader, creating lasting relationships along the way. For this reason, many well-known corporations like Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and GM now have blogs. They understand the value of relating to their audience on a more personal level-your visitors will become your readers, your readers will become your leads, and those leads will turn into sales for your company. This holds especially true for real estate professionals. Through a blog, you can become a trusted and respected source of information on real estate in your farm area. By providing valuable insight into the business of real estate, your readers will come to see you as knowledgeable and experienced which will then cause them to choose you over your competition when it comes time for them to buy or sell their home. You will also gain notoriety with your colleagues which can turn into a source of income through referrals. This makes blogging a powerful tool in building your personal brand and real estate business.

You don't just want to appeal to people-you want to appeal to the search engines as well. Here are some interesting facts concerning the usage of search engines like Yahoo!, Google, and MSN in the U.S.:

• 75% of Americans use search engines on a regular basis
• 56% of Americans use search engines daily
• 40% of searches are for local businesses and services
• 54% of Americans use the internet instead of the phone book to find local services

Do you want to be found when people in your area are looking for real estate? Any sane business person would want to get a piece of the internet action. Good placement in the search engines is how you are going to obtain traffic to your site. Blogs are very attractive to the search engines because of the constant addition of content that occurs on a blog. Every time you add new information to your blog, the search engines are alerted that you have added something new and they come and visit your site. The more content you add, the more your site gets visited and if you are creating quality content, you will see your blog move to the top of the search engines faster than a website ever possibly could. Adding new content to your blog consistently takes dedication and time but attaining high placement in the search engines will unlock earning potential beyond your imagination.

If you want to create an online presence that will create visibility and leads for your business, a blog is the way to go. Websites are becoming a thing of the past so don't wait another day to start a blog for your real estate business. Check out our Real Estate Blog Builder for an easy, quick, and affordable solution for your real estate blog needs.